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cy-cyborg · 5 months

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Disability Tropes: The Miracle Cure

The miracle cure is a trope with a pretty negative reputation in disability circles, especially online. It describes a scenario in which, a disabled character, through either magic, advanced technology, divine intervention or some combination of the three, has their disability cured throughout the course of the story. Sometimes this is literally, as in the disability is completely and entirely cured with no strings attached. Other times, it looks like giving an amputee character a prosthetic so advanced that it's basically the same as "the real thing" and that they never take off or have any issue with, or giving the character with a spinal injury an implant that bypasses the physical spine's break, or connects to an exoskeleton that allows them to walk again. Sometimes, it can even look like giving a character some kind of magic item or power that negates the effects of the disability, like what I talked about in my post about "the super-crip" trope. Either way though, the effect is the same: The disability is functionally cured and is no longer an "issue" the author or character has to worry about.

But why would this be a bad thing? In a world with magic or super-advanced tech, if you can cure a character's disability, why wouldn't you?

[ID: a screenshot of Roy mustang from Full metal alchemist Brotherhood, a white man with short black hair in a hospital gown. In the corner of the screen is the hand of another person holding a small red gemstone. /End ID]

Well there's a few reasons. First, lets talk about the purely writing related ones. If you've been around the writing or even media critique communities for a bit, you've likely heard people voicing their frustrations with tropes like "The fake-out death" where a character is either implied to have died, but comes back later, or is explicitly shown to be dead and then resurrected. Often when this happens in media, it leaves the audience feeling cheated and like a character's actions and choices don't really matter if even the worst mistakes and consequences can be undone. In the case of the latter situation, where they die and are brought back, it can make the stakes of the whole story feel a lot lower, since even something like death is shown to be reversible, so the audience doesn't really have to worry about anything bad happening to their favourite character, and once you've used this trope one time, people will constantly wonder why you wouldn't use it every time it comes up.

The same is true for "fixing" a character's disability. It sets a precedent that even things as big and life-changing as disability aren't permanent in this setting. We don't have to worry about anything major happening to the characters, there's no risks associated with their actions if it can all be undone, and it will lower the stakes of the story for your audience. Personally, I also feel like it's often used as a cop-out. Like writers wanted to include a major injury the leads to something big like disability for shock value, but weren't sure how to actually deal with it afterwards, so they just made it go away. Even in cases where the character start the story with a disability and are cured, this can still cause issues with your story's stakes, because again, once we've seen you do it once, we know its possible, so we won't feel the need to worry about anything being permanent.

Ok, so that's the purely writing related reasons, but what if that situation doesn't apply to the story you're writing? What if they're "fixed" right at the end, or the way they're cured is really rare, so it can't be used multiple times?

I'm glad you asked, because no, this is far from the only reason to avoid the trope! In my opinion, the more important reason to avoid it is because of how the a lot of the disabled community feels about the miracle cure trope, and the ideas about disability it can perpetuate if you're not very, very careful.

You might have noticed that throughout this post, I've put words like "cured" and "fixed" in quotes, and that's because not every disabled person wants a cure or feels like their ideal to strive for is able-bodied and neurotypical. For many of us, we have come to see our disabilities as part of us, as part of our identities and our sense of self, the same way I, as a queer person might see my queerness as a part of my identity. This is an especially common view among people who were born with their disability or who had them from a young age, since this is all they've ever really known, or who's disability impacts the way they think, perceive and process the world around them, how they communicate with people or in communities who have a long history of forced conformity and erasure such as the autism and deaf communities. Many disabilities have such massive impacts on our lives that we literally wouldn't be who we are today if they were taken away. So often though, when non-disabled people write disabled characters, they assume we'd all take a "cure" in a heart-beat. They assumed we all desire to be just like them again, and this simply isn't the case. Some people absolutely would, and there's nothing wrong with that, but it's not as universal as media representation makes it out to be.

Another reason it's so heavily disliked is because this trope is often used in conjunction with other ableist and harmful tropes or it's used in ways that perpetuate misinformation about living with a disability and it can have ableist implications, even if that's not what the author necessarily intended.

If the miracle cure is used right at the end of the story for example, as a way to give characters a happy ending it can imply that the only way for a disabled character to be happy in the long run, is for them to be "fixed", especially if they were miserable all the way up until that point. If it's used earlier in the story as a way to get said character back into the action, it can also be read as the author thinking that disabled people can't be of use to the plot, and so the only way to keep them around is to "fix" them.

Of course, there's also the fact that some authors and writers will also play up how bad being disabled is in order to show why a cure is justified, playing into the "sad disabled person" trope in the process, which is pretty much what it says on the tin. Don't get me wrong, this isn't to say that being disabled is all easy-breezy, there are never any hard days and you should never show your character struggling, not at all, the "sad disabled person" trope has it's place (even if I personally am not a fan on it), but when both the "sad disabled person" trope and the miracle cure trope are used together, it's not a great look.

This is especially bad when the very thing that cures the disability, or perhaps the quest the heroes need to go on to get it, is shown to be harmful to others or the disabled person themselves. Portraying living with a disability as something so bad that it justifies hurting others, putting others at risk, loosing yourself or killing yourself in order to achieve this cure perpetuates the already harmful idea that disability is a fate worse than death, and anything is justified to avoid it.

I've also noticed the reasons the authors and writers give for wanting to cure their characters are very frequently based on stereotypes, a lack of research in to the actual limits of a person's disability and a lack of understanding. One story I recall reading years ago made sure to tell you how miserable it's main character, a former cyclist, was because he'd been in a car accident where he'd lost his arm, and now couldn't ride bikes anymore, seemingly unaware of the fact arm amputees can, in fact, ride bikes. There are several whole sports centred around it, and even entire companies dedicated to making prosthetic hands specifically for riding bikes. but no, the only way for this to resolve and for him to be happy was to give him his arm back as a magical Christmas miracle! It would be one thing if the story had acknowledged that he'd tried cycling again but just had difficulties with it, or something was stopping him from being able to do it like not being able to wear the required prosthetic or something, but it really did seem as though the author was entirely unaware it was even possible, which is an issue when it's the whole point of your story existing. This happens a lot more often than you'd think, and it's very clear when an author hasn't even bothered to google search if their character would be able to do something before deciding the only solution is to take the disability away.

There's also the frustration that comes from being part of an underrepresented minority, finally seeing a character like you on screen or in a book, only for that representation to be taken away. Disabled people make up roughly 16% of the population (though many estimate these numbers are actually much higher), but only about 2.8% of American TV shows and 4.1% of Australian TV shows feature explicitly disabled characters. In 2019, around 2.3% of films featured disabled characters in a speaking roll, and while it's slowly getting better as time goes on, progress on that front is very slow, which is why its so frustrating when we do see characters like ourselves and so much of their stories focus on wishing to be, trying to become or actually being "cured".

An finally, there's the fact this is just a really common trope. Even if we ignore the issues it can cause with your story's tone and stakes, the harm it can do to the community when not handled with care, the negative perceptions it can perpetuate and everything else. It's just a plain-old overdone trope. It shows up so often that I, and a lot of disabled people, are just getting tired of seeing it. Despite everything I've said, there are valid reasons for people to not want to be disabled, and just like how I made sure to emphasise that not everyone wants a cure, it's important to recognise that not everyone would refuse it either. So long as it's not done in a way that implies it's universal, in theory, depicting someone who would want and accept a cure is totally fine. The issue is though that this trope is so common and so overdone that it's starting to feel like it's all we ever see, especially in genres like sci-fi and fantasy (and also Christmas movies for some reason).

[ID: A Gif of a white man in a top hat nodding his head with the caption "Merry Christmas" down the bottom. /end ID]

Personally, because it's so common, I find even the few examples of the trope used well frustrating, and I honestly feel that it's at the point where it should be avoided entirely where possible.

Ok but Cy, you mentioned there are ways to use this trope well, what are they?

So, like I said, I'm of the opinion that this trope is better off not being in your work at all, but if, for whatever reason, you can't avoid it, or it's use is really that important to the story you want to tell, there are less harmful ways to implement it.

Don't have your only disabled character take the cure

If you really must cure your disabled character's disability, don't make them the only disabled person in the story. Show us another character who, when offered the same cure, chooses not to take it. This at least helps push back a little against the assumption of "of course everyone would want this" that these kinds of stories often imply and doesn't contribute (as much) to disability erasure in the media.

Don't make it a total cure

In real life, there are cures for some disabilities, but they rarely leave no trace. For example, an amputee's limb can sometimes be reattached if it was severed and they received medical treatment fast enough, but it usually results in at least a little nerve damage and difficulties with muscle strength, blood flow or co-ordination in that limb. Often times, these "cures" will fix one issue, but create another. You might not be an amputee anymore, but you're still disabled, just in a different way. You can reflect this in your fictional cures to avoid it feeling like you just wanted to avoid doing the work to write good disabled representation.

Do something interesting with it

I got a comment on my old tumblr or possibly Tik Tok account ages ago talking about their planned use for the miracle cure trope, where their character accepts the cure at the cost of the things that made her life enjoyable post-disability. Prior to accepting the cure, she had found other ways to be independent to some extent and her community and friends helped her bridge the gaps, but they were all taken from her when she was "cured" forcing her into isolation. Kind of like a "be careful what you wish for" sort of thing. The story was meant to be a critique on how society ignores alternative ways of getting the same result and how conforming to other people's ideas of "normal" isn't always what you need to bring you happiness. This was a genuinely interesting way to use the trope I think, and it's a perfect example of taking this trope and twisting it to make an interesting point. If you must use a trope like this, at least use it to say something other than "disability makes me sad so I don't want to think about it too much". Alternatively, on a less serious note, I'm also not entirely opposed to the miracle cure being used for comedy if it fits the tone. The Orville has some issues with it's use of the Miracle Cure trope, but I'd be lying if I said Isaac amputating Gordan's leg as a prank, knowing it could be reversed in a few hours did get a chuckle out of me.

If your villain's motivation is finding a cure for themselves, don't use it as justification for hurting people

Disabled villains need a post all their own honestly, but when a villain's motivation for doing all the terrible things they do is so they don't have to be disabled anymore, it's especially frustrating. Doubly so if the writer's are implying that they're justified in their actions, or at least that their actions are understandable because "who would want to live like that?" Honestly, as a general rule of thumb, avoid making your villains disabled if you aren't disabled yourself (especially if they're your only disabled character), but if they are disabled, don't use the disability as a justification for them hurting people while finding a cure.

So are there any examples currently out there to look at where the trope is used, if not well, at least tolerably?

Yeah, I'd say so, but they're few and far between. Two examples come to mind for me though.

The Dragon Prince:

[ID: A Gif of Ava the Wolf from the Dragon Prince, a light brown, fluffy wolf who is missing her front right leg. /End ID]

The Dragon Prince on Netflix uses the miracle cure twice, but I still really enjoyed the show (at least I did, up until my Netflix subscription ran out, so I've only seen up to season 4). The first time the trope is used in the series, it's actually a fake-out. Two of the main characters, while looking for someone to help them heal the dragon egg they're carrying, encounter a young girl named Ellis and her pet wolf Ava. The two explain their egg is not looking good and they need to find someone to help it, but no one they've found had the knowledge or ability to do anything to help. Ellis says she knows a healer who can help them, and tells them that this healer even restored Ava's amputated leg when she was a pup. When we actually reach this "miracle healer" however, she is revealed to be simply an illusionist. She explains that Ava is still missing her leg, she simply made it look as though she had restored it because Ellis's parents were planning to throw the puppy out, believing it would not survive with its disability and would only be a drain on supplies. This was not actually true and Ava adapted to her amputation very well, she simply needed more time, and hiding her disability and making her appear abled gave her the time she needed to fully recover and adjust. When they return to the healer with the main characters, she removes the illusion and explains why she did it, emphasising that the real problem was never with Ava, but with how people made assumptions about her.

While I do feel it was drawn out a bit too long, I do appreciate the use of the trope as the set up to an overall positive twist. Disability does come with down-sides, it's part of the deal and it would have been nice to see a bit more of that, but for disabilities like amputation in particular, the worst of our problems often come from a lack of adequate support and people's pre-conceived ideas about us, and it was nice to see this reflected, even if it is a little overly simplified.

The second time this trope comes up in the series is when one of the antagonists, Soren, is injured during a fight with a dragon, becoming paralysed from the neck down. His sister, Claudia is absolutely beside herself, believing it was her fault this even happened in the first place, but Soren actually takes his new disability very, very well, explaining that he understands there are things he can't do now, but that there's a lot of things he can still try, that his previous job as a soldier just didn't allow time for. It's possible this reaction was him being in denial but it came across to me as genuine acceptance. He is adamant that he doesn't want a cure right from the beginning because he knows that a cure would come at a cost that he doesn't want his sister to pay, and that he is content and happy with this new direction his life will be going in. Claudia, however, is not content. It had been shown that she was already using dark magic, but this event is what starts her down the path of using it in earnest, disregarding the harm it will cause to those around her. She ignores Soren's wishes, kills several animals in order to fuel the healing spell that will "fix" him, and Soren is pretty clearly shown to be horrified by her actions. What I like about this use of the miracle cure trope is that it touches on something I've seen happen a lot to disabled people in real-life, but that rarely shows up in media - the fact that just because we accept ourselves, our disabilities and our new limits, doesn't mean our friends and family will, unfortunately. In my own life, my mum and dad were always accepting of my disability when I was younger, but as I got older and my support needs changed, my body took longer to heal and I stopped being able to do a lot of things I could when I was little, they had a very hard time coming to terms with it and accepting it. I'm not alone in this either, a lot of disabled people end up cutting contact with friends and family members who refuse to accept the reality of our situations and insist "if we just try harder maybe we won't be so disabled" or "Maybe you will get better if you just do [xyz]". Unfortunately however, some disable people's wishes are ignored completely, like Soren's were. You see this a lot in autistic children who's parents are so desperate to find a cure that they hurt their kids through toxic and dangerous "treatments" or by putting them through abusive therapies that do more harm than good. Claudia has good intentions, but her complete disregard for Soren's decision still harm them both in the long run, leading to the deterioration of their relationship and causing her to spiral down a very dark path.

Full Metal Alchemist: Brotherhood

[ID: A Gif of Ed from full metal alchemist, a white boy with blond hair, staring angrily at a jar of milk on the table. His brother Al, a sentiant suit of armour, is in the background looking directly at the camera. The caption, spoken by Ed, says "So we meet again you little bastard" /end ID.]

The show does begin with Ed and Al looking for a way to cure their disabilities (which they gave themselves when trying to resurrect their mother as children went horribly wrong). However, when the boys discover that the object needed to do that - a philosopher's stone, can only by made through absolutely abhorrent and despicable means, and using one, likewise, comes at the cost of potentially hundreds or thousands of people's souls, they immediately stop, and shift their focus on finding the stones that had already been made so it can't fall into the wrong hands, and preventing the creation of new ones. The core theme of the show is that everything has a cost, and sometimes the cost is simply too great.

However, right at the end of the show, several characters are healed in a variety of ways. Ed gives up his ability to do alchemy to get his brother's body back, as well as his arm so he can save his friends in the final battle, but neither of the boys come away from this completely "healed". Al's body has not been used since he was a child, and so it is shown he has experienced severe muscular atrophy that will take a long time and a lot of work to recover from, acknowledging that he has a pretty tough road ahead of him. When we see him in the epilogue, he is still on crutches despite this being several months after getting his body back. Likewise Ed is not fully healed, and is still missing one of his legs even if he got his arm back.

The more... interesting use of the trope, however, is in the form of Colonel Mustang who was blinded in the final season. Mustang is shown to take to his blindness pretty well given the circumstances, finding a variety of ways to continue doing his job and reaching his goals. When other characters offer to let him use the philosopher's stone to heal himself however, he takes it, acknowledging that this is a horrible thing to do and that Ed and Al would be extremely disappointed in him if they ever found out. He uses it both to cure his own disability, and to cure another character who was injured earlier in the show. While I'll admit, I did not like this ending, I can at least appreciate that the show made sure to emphasis that a) Mustang was doing fine without the cure, and b) that this was not morally justified. The show spent a very long time drilling into the viewer how morally reprehensible using the stone was, and it didn't try to make an exception for Mustang - you weren't supposed to like that he did that.

When I talk about these tropes, I do try to give them a fair chance and discuss the ways it can potentially work, but I really do want to reiterate that this particular trope really is best avoided. There are ways to make it work, but they will still leave a bad taste in many of your viewer's or reader's mouths and you have to be exceptionally careful with your wording and framing, not just in the scenes where this trope is used, but in the lead up. If you really must use it, I highly recommend getting a few disability sensitivity readers and/or consultants (yes, even if you are disabled yourself) to help you avoid some of the often overlooked pitfalls.

#writing disability With Cy Cyborg #very long post #I could have sworn I talked about this trope already but I couldn't find the post. Apparently I had a lot more to say anyway lol #long post #disability #Disabled #Disability representation #Physical Disability #disability Tropes #Writing #Writeblr #Authors #Disabled Rep #Writing Advice #writing Tips #Disabled Characters #writing disability

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auspicioustidings · 7 months

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Firewatch

Summary: You are unconscious on the floor of the fire watch tower while the fire fighters decide what exactly to do with you. (Also this is a series, links are in my pinned posts to the other parts :) )

Work Count: 1.3k

CWs: It's a little (a lot) kidnap-ey

Firewatch - Firefighter AU

"Wit if we didnae dae that though?"

Price looked at the unconscious body on the floor. Soap had carried you all the way up without a word, all of them ignoring that the Scottish man had just abducted you. Scratched and bruised but miraculously not one burn on you despite the blaze that had just destroyed your little cottage and tried to tear through the forest after.

It was a small miracle that the weather had turned, the downpour helping them to stop the flames from spreading further into the forest, their forest. His team of firefighters lived and worked here, their cabin a short hike away from the Firewatch tower. They all had their own reasons for living off grid, choosing this life. They had each other, but he couldn't deny that there had been something pleasant about watching you move into the crumbling cottage just on the edge of the forest.

You had done most of the renovation work yourself, they knew that because it had become a hobby to watch you from the tower. If it bordered on obsession sometimes, well he let that slide, had said nothing when from the tower he had watched Simon go into your cottage (didn't even have to break in, you didn't lock it, drove them wild when they realised). Neither Mactavish nor Garrick had asked where the blanket had come from when Simon returned with it that night. They already knew. He remembered it smelled of bergamot in the beginning.

"You're suggesting we let the authorities pronounce her dead?" Price asked, although if he was being honest it barely sounded like a question, more like a statement.

"She should be dead doing the bloody electrical work herself. We supposed to just leave her to her own devices? She needs looking after."

Simon did believe that it wouldn't be a bad thing to keep you. They could look after you, give you a good life here. You'd already been testing his self-control and he knew it wasn't just him. He may have been the only one to have entered your cottage, although it should be noted that despite the raging temptation to touch you he had only taken the blanket from your sleeping body, replacing it with a thicker one. But he was not the only one who had been desperately trying to look after you despite your seeming insistence to be as reckless as possible.

Gaz had taken a sledgehammer to the rickety ladder you were using while you were out, making sure it wasn't usable anymore so nobody had to watch you fall to your damn death. Price had to hold the man back when you had bought a new one. Safer than what you had been using, but wouldn't it be better to let them take that risk? Wouldn't it be nice to sit back and relax while Gaz patched up the roof for you?

Johnny had been near feral when you had taken to strolling through the forest, coming to within a metre of one of their traps. He had barked down the radio to the cabin in a panic from his spot on the watch tower and it had taken hours of Simon sitting with him on watch to calm him down. Johnny went out that night and picked up every trap they had laid, refusing to let anyone put anymore out until he had marked a walking trail for you to follow and then watched for weeks to be certain you had picked up on it and wouldn't stray.

"He's not wrong. What happens when that git who delivers her mail decides he wants to cosy up? Look at her, she's practically begging to get taken advantage of. It's not safe out there for her" Gaz added. He never would have considered kidnapping you as such, but it made perfect sense to him that they don't tell the authorities that they had rescued you from the fire. This wasn't kidnapping, more divine intervention.

They all did look at you then, unconscious on the floor in your paint splattered dungarees, breathing easily in and out. You had been choking from the smoke when Simon had hauled you over his shoulder and gotten you outside, Gaz getting an oxygen mask on you while Johnny and Price tried to contain the fire. The way you had looked up at Simon when you realised you were alive, that he had saved you. God you had been so beautiful to him, some mixture of adoration and confusion in your eyes, a hint of fear from him being in full gear and face mask.

He gently cradled your head when you tried to look over at what Gaz was doing, not letting you see him prepare the sedative. You didn't even notice the sting of the needle, probably in shock. Gaz told himself that it was so you could rest, so they didn't need to worry about you going into a panic. Of course it wasn't nefarious to sedate you, how could it be when you looked so peaceful as you slept? If he had done something wrong Simon would have stopped him, Johnny wouldn't have scooped you up and carried you all the way home, Price wouldn't have your cat rubbing against his legs after having carried the little thing here so you wouldn't worry about her when you woke up.

Price sighed, leaning down to give the cat a few scratches behind the ear. They would need to get some things from town to make you comfortable, but for the moment you'd have to stay in the tower away from prying eyes. The sheriff would be paying their cabin a visit to go over the incident report. They'd need to figure out some of the details, mess with the timelines a little to make it feasible that the fire would have left nothing behind of you. It shouldn't be too difficult, the community trusted them and you were an outsider who had breezed into town one day. Nobody would be demanding DNA testing to confirm.

"If we are doing this, we are going to do it proper. I hear any complaints from her and you can't justify that whatever she's mad about wasn't for her own good then I put you on 24 hour fire watch for a fortnight, understood?"

They all nodded, Johnny and Gaz not able to keep from grinning. The former was bouncing on his heels, excited out of his mind that they were keeping you. Price sighed again when he looked to Simon for some sort of support and the man just laughed.

"Kyle stay with her. Make sure she stays put when she wakes up, keep her happy. Lie when you have to keep her calm. You two are with me, we need to get back home and talk to the sheriff when she comes calling."

"Whit?! How's that fair? Let me stay instead!"

"Kyle is staying because he won't bloody pounce on her the minute she's awake."

Johnny had bitched about it the whole way back to the cabin, talking to the cat in his arms when Simon and Price stopped paying him any mind. They'd need to justify why they would be buying cat supplies and the sheriff was nothing if not appreciative of them when they explained they had found the poor thing out in the trees and would adopt it now that it's owner was gone.

It all went more smoothly than they could have dared dream. The real difficulty was dealing with Johnny's endless complaining when they returned to the watch tower to find that the expectation of Gaz not pouncing on you the moment you were awake had been an unrealistic one.

#cod #tf 141 x reader #cod au #simon riley x reader #soap x reader #gaz x reader #price x reader #fanfic #mhairiwrites

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sapphic-agent · 13 days

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Rewriting the Gaang in LOK

Basically how I would have written the adult Gaang. Pretend the comics as they are don't exist.

Katara: Breaks up with Aang sometime post-finale to do some soul-searching. Travels the world on her own and sees how people are struggling after the war. After talking (beating) some sense into a few government officials, she realizes that the best way to help people post-war is through politics. She becomes an (unofficial) ambassador, helping and negotiating aid for small villages that tend to get overlooked and does this for a number of years. She joins up with Zuko and Aang after they found the United Republic of Nations and becomes Councilwoman Katara, representative of the Southern Water Tribe. She eventually gets voted chairwoman due to her passion to improve the lives of the citizens (and because her fellow council members are too scared to vote against her). She heals on the side when she needs to, but only out of obligation since she can't stand to see people suffer; she puts much more effort into getting raising funds for a hospital full of healers. A few years later, Haru moves to Republic City and is just as awestruck by her as he was the day they met (the pornstache has been removed by divine intervention). They meet up a couple of times; for drinks after work, walks around the city, and they even attend a few galas together. They eventually start dating and get married two years later. They have their first daughter Kya (who's an earthbender), a son- Tyro (who's a nonbender), and another daughter Suma (who's a waterbender). They live a happy, peaceful (if you could call Katara stopping the occasional criminal before the police peaceful) life together where their children are well-loved and as part of the Southern Water Tribe as they are the Earth Kingdom. Aang's death hits their family hard, but they all come together and support each other. Katara personally mentors Korra, even convincing her family move to Republic City so that the Avatar knows the people she's meant to protect (the White Lotus protests, they fail❤️). She teaches Korra Waterbending, but also teaches her empathy and appreciation for other cultures (and that sometimes, selfish world leaders need a good punch to the face, a lesson Korra took to heart even though she absolutely wasn't supposed to see it).

Aang: Is torn up after Katara breaks up with him. He's hurt and confused and doesn't know what to do with himself. He retreats to Ba Sing Se where he talks with Iroh and learns that he unfairly pushed his feelings onto Katara. Wracked with guilt at hurting someone he cares about so much, Aang realizes that he has a lot of growing up to do. He focuses on his job as the Avatar, working closely with Zuko, Kuei, and the other leaders to heal the world after the war. The first time he sees Katara again is when she arrives to help with the United Republic of Nations. He apologizes to her and Katara forgives him, promising they'll always be best friends. His role in Republic City is more or less the same, though at some point he develops feelings for Toph. But he fears doing to her what he had done to Katara, so he tries to ignore them. But Toph, never one to beat around the bush, point-blank asks him if he's ever gonna man-up and confess to her. They start dating, and Lin comes a few months later as a surprise. They have their hiccups- Aang especially needing to reconcile with the fact that there's a chance she might not be an Airbender- but they manage to resolve them. Lin is an Earthender, of course, but Aang loves his little girl to pieces (which is good, because Toph would kill him if she suspected otherwise). Tenzin is born three years later, an Airbender, and Su Yin is born two years after that as an Earthbender. Lastly there's Bumi, a nonbender. There's always the urge to favor Tenzin, but Aang knows he can't. They're all his children and they deserve to be treated as such. So he teaches them all about their culture, takes them all on trips. The kids fight, but Aang is always quick to help resolve it (as it turns out, getting Lin and Su to stop fighting is a lot harder than getting the four nations to get along, go figure). Aang loves his wife and kids and wouldn't trade any of them for the world. He dies peacefully at age 66, surrounded by his children and the love of his life.

Sokka: Fucking hates politics. He'll leave the negotiating and speeches to his sister, thank you very much. If the room of government officials isn't a war room, he wants no part in it. After the war, he spends most of his time in the Southern Water Tribe. He works with his father to rebuild and relearn their culture, and writes frequent letters to his sister. Though, something about his life in the south is unfulfilling. Maybe he misses Suki, but there's something about inventing that calls to him. He can't do much of that in the south pole, so he leaves for the Earth Kingdom, helping villages struggling with heat, agriculture, transportation, etc. In the United Republic of Nations, he becomes lead engineer of the city, utilizing bending to make quick technological advances. He and Suki reunite in Republic City where Suki becomes the police chief. They get back together and have a daughter, Lian. The three of them live a simple life together, until Suki gets gravely injured in the line of duty when Lian is twenty. They decide to retire to the Southern Water Tribe where Sokka takes over for Hakoda as chief and prepares Lian to take over for him.

Toph: When Toph hears that Twinkle Toes and Sparky finally started that fancy new city, she thinks it's the perfect opportunity to cause a little chaos. Closing her metalbending school, she decides to relive her days as the Blind Bandit by founding pro-bending (thanks @ecoterrorist-katara for the idea!). Zuko's a hater and tries to shut it down because "safety," but finds no help in Aang who really, really loves the idea. He goes to every one of her matches and Toph feels both smug pride and... Something else. But she tells herself it would never happen, Twinkle Toes likes girls like Sugar Queen and she was the furthest thing from that. But she isn't totally oblivious, she can feel his heartbeat pick up when he's around her and how he's started to stutter when he's talking to her. So she bites the bullet and they start happily dating. But the arrival of Lin uncovers issues she didn't even know were there. Lin cries loudly and for Toph who relies heavily on her sense of hearing, it's hell. She was also unprepared for how much her body would change. She finds herself not wanting to be around her daughter. But Aang realizes this and urges her to talk to someone. After some arguing, she does. Aang is attentive, so Toph can take breaks when she needs to and Katara and Suki are always ready to get her out of the house when she's overwhelmed. Things with Lin get better and when Tenzin comes around she doesn't suffer nearly as much. Su Yin is similar. It's hard with Bumi because she's older, but Aang and her friends are there to support her. Toph can be distant with her children- her closely monitored childhood always present in her mind- but sees how Aang can be doting and allow their kids freedom. She follows by his example, trying to find a balance between hovering and absence. Aang's death is the worst day of her life- she was there, she felt his heart stop- and she retreats into the swamp for a while to grieve. But she returns to Republic City when Katara begins to mentor the new Avatar. Not to be outdone by Sugar Queen, she becomes Korra's second teacher. It's hard to be around Korra sometimes, but she likes the girl's spunk and attitude, even if she is a brat.

Zuko: Zuko struggles after the war. The obligations of the Fire Lord are crushing and daunting and the fear of turning into his father feels like it's constantly looming over his head. Mai doesn't understand why he's struggling so much and he can't figure out how to explain it to her, so they break up. She goes to Kyoshi Island to spend time with Ty Lee and figure out what she wants in life. Stressed, burnt-out, and heartbroken, Zuko asks Aang to kill him if he ever starts to act like Ozai, but Aang steadfastly refuses, berating him for even suggesting it. Aang assures him that he'll never turn into his father and that he has his friends to rely on. He follows after Aang to Ba Sing Se, working in his uncle's tea shop as a much needed break. He opens up to Iroh about his fears and Iroh affirms that even having these worries proves that he'll never be Ozai. He spends time in Ba Sing Se working in the tea shop and negotiating with the Earth King when he meets Jin again. She's as carefree as she was back then and Zuko is both envious and in awe of it. But he knows he can't have a relationship with her, he can't burden her with his problems. But Jin is gently persistent, lending an ear when he needs one and assuring him that he isn't burdening her. When she asks him if he wants to be with her, he confesses that he does- more than anything- but also admits that he has no idea how it'll work. She tells him that if they want to be together no one should stop them. A year later, they're married and she's crowned Fire Lady Jin. There are some protests to their relationship from traditionalists, but Ambassador Katara (Zuko is so sure that she was never actually given that title, but he can't prove it) is quick to shut them down citing that the Fire Lord marrying an Earth Kingdom girl is a sign of unity. They have their daughter, Izumi, and she's Zuko's entire world. Zuko's greatest fear is that his children will end up like him and Azula, so he refrains from having more kids. Jin respects this, but urges him to talk to Azula. So he does; his sister curses him out, but seems to enjoy his company in her own way. They'll never have a good relationship, but Zuko doesn't want her to feel alone so he makes time at least once a week. It's shortly after Aang's death that Zuko relinquishes the title of Fire Lord to Izumi, his grief over his lifetime friend far too painful. Eventually, though, Katara and Toph bully him into training the new Avatar. It's not a role for a retired Fire Lord, but Zuko knows that the world needs Korra to be strong and it's his responsibility to make that happen as much as he can. And so, he becomes Avatar Korra's third teacher (if you told him 60 years ago that he'd become the Avatar's most sane instructor, he'd think you were high on cactus juice. But with Katara punching dictators in the face and Toph breaking every rule ever written, someone has to be a good influence).

Occupations if you missed them:

Katara: (Unofficial/Self-proclaimed) Ambassador of the Southern Water Tribe, United Republic of Nations Councilwoman and later Chairwoman, Healer (on the side), Waterbending Master to the Avatar

Aang: Avatar, United Republic of Nations Councilman

Sokka: Engineer and Inventor, Chief of the Southern Water Tribe

Toph: Pro-Bender, Manager of the Pro-Bending Arena, Earthbending Master to the Avatar

Zuko: Fire Lord, Firebending Master to the Avatar

Suki: Police Chief of Republic City (I'm sorry I didn't make a detailed background for her I got lazy, I promise I don't love her any less😭)

Defending my ship choices:

Harutara: Come on, y'all know what I'm about at this point. They're my everything, how could I not have them together? Plus, there's something really poetic about Haru falling for her as an adult the way he did as a teenager: watching her inspire those around her. I headcanon that he's enamoured with the sound of her voice because it's the voice that liberated him and his people and he attends all her speeches

Taang: I actually wasn't sure about this one. I'm not an active Taang shipper, but I do think they'd really balance each other out. Toph is the hard ass Aang needs to challenge him and Aang would bring out the softer side in her. Toph would never let Aang favor one kid over the other and Aang wouldn't let Toph neglect their kids. So looking at it like that, I felt them being together would be best for the story

Sukka: It's not as perfect in canon as people make it out to be, but I still love them. I wouldn't want any different for them

Jinko: This one actually made more sense than I would have thought. Jin is very different from Mai, so I can really see her being what Zuko needs considering where he would be mentally. I like Mai, but I feel Maiko really made her way more one dimensional so her living with Ty Lee and finding herself feels like a better end for her (and if they start dating, that's no one's business). And we've already seen Zuko go out of his way to make Jin happy so it's not like we're getting another Kataang situation. I'm happy with this for them

The Kids:

Yes, I purposely made Kya an Earthbender. And yes, Katara still gives her her mother's necklace. Because that's her firstborn daughter no matter what element she does (or doesn't) bend. One thing I hate is that Bryke made the Kataang kids primarily part of the culture that they bend. That's such a slap in the face to biracial kids, not to mention poor Bumi who doesn't seem to belong to either for some reason until he ends up an Airbender. So yeah, all of the Harutara kids are part of the EK and SWT. Suma is a name I made up because it sounded pretty

I know it's weird to think of Lin and Tenzin as siblings, I felt so odd writing it. But I love them both so I couldn't just not write them. I made Bumi the youngest so he could be spoiled because he deserved better in canon. Su and Lin have a better relationship, but they still butt heads because they feel the need to one-up each other due to them both being Earthbenders (and later Metalbenders). Lin still becomes a cop, but their big fight never happened because Su was never neglected to the point of becoming a criminal. All four kids are taught Air Nomad culture and traditions and taken on trips because Aang is a decent father

I named Lian partly after Yue, since Yuèliàng means moon in Chinese. One of my gripes with LOK is that Katara and Sokka's family are meant to be the leaders of the SWT. Kya or Bumi should be the chief in canon, but Bryke just... Didn't do that for some reason. So fuck it, Sokka's daughter is chief now

Nothing really changes about Izumi, although I'd say she's a little friendlier. I contemplated giving Zuko more kids, but I actually think his decision not to have more kids was one of Bryke's better choices. It makes sense, so I didn't feel the need to change it

Other notes:

The Gaang teaching/helping raise baby Korra is something I live for

The Red Lotus is swiftly dealt with by Katara, Toph, Zuko, Suki, and Sokka when Korra is a kid. They never stood a chance. I was actually going to have Sokka still die during the attack in the SWT and Suki kill Zaheer in revenge, but eh I decided not to off Sokka

The Civil War still happens, but differently. I don't have the patience to go into that, just know that Katara is HEAVILY involved

Welp, that's everything in my brain

61 notes · View notes

postmodernbeliever · 1 month

Text

stalker - fox mulder x female reader

at the fbi, your job is to watch who you're asked to. but on your own time, you watch fox mulder... and little do you know, he's watching you, too.

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my ao3 | word count: 3,518

content tags: sneaking around, embarrassment, stalking, longing, fox mulder is watching you, you are watching fox mulder, fox is a freak like you, fox likes weirdos, obsessive behavior, suggestive themes, you and fox just kinda eyefuck and nothing happens but god should it, cross-posted on ao3

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they all call him spooky mulder. what a nickname, spooky- even in its mainstream use, it has not lost its effect. there was always something off about him, something unsettling, which piqued your interest. you liked it so much that you paid special attention. it was your nature to keep tabs; you watched him come and go from his basement office, all the while pretending to be down in the gutter of the j. edgar hoover building for any other suspicious reason than taking mental notes on him.

sure, it may sound creepy, but this is your job- this is why the fbi has you on the payroll. you’re what they call “the eyes and ears”, and in a sense, you don’t really have a job. your cover is to work in the filing department, faceless and nameless, and keep things organized as they go off to different sectors. you are the one sending weapons to evidence (or elsewhere) and case files to agents (or not) at the heart of the organization, where you just become the signing-off signature. but that office, where you blend in, is how they use you best. orders directly from the top tell you who to watch and when to come forward with information. but they never assigned you to special agent fox mulder. as was his infamous passion project dubbed the X files, this was your unassigned interest within the bureau- he was your freakish fixation.

you followed his case files as they came to inconclusive endings. you noticed when his hair grew too long. you knew he liked the coffee from the break room by a.d. skinner’s office, but he liked the creamer they kept on the first floor, so he traveled cross-complex to make the cup taste just right. you’d read every report and drowned in his philosophical, metaphysical droning, admiring the prose so overdosed on sleep deprivation and the ramblings of a transcending mind. it was like twisted poetry, how he explained what each case had imparted upon him. the way he viewed sociology, the way he viewed intervention both divine and damned, the manner in which he proposed the forces at play work and how they are ever-changing and insurmountable… god, he really is a genius. everyone may think he’s insane, or that his work is a waste of valuable resources, but fox mulder’s mind was one to be entertained, one to be challenged. to let his power go misrepresented or his purpose go any less than unabated would be a crime (if anyone asked you.)

see, this is why it could be considered weird. you revered him like a deity, unapologetically idolatrous of his brainpower- and from a more internal, girlish yearning, you loved his face. god, that face. you had examined his personal files many times in the safety of your office, tracing invisible lines over the photographs of him; caressing the scrapes and bruises documented from altercations with suspects, drooling over his academy polaroids stashed away from old physical exams. he still looked as young and charming as he did in his old school photos. a young oxford man, beautiful, traumatized, in need of proof. his work demanded his darkest instincts and most disgusting thoughts, and you loved him for it, or at least the idea of what it turned him into. and as far as word travels, fox mulder bars no personality incontinuities. after all the stories of the blood he’s tasted at crime scenes and the horrific pictures of murders and monsters plastered on the walls of his murky office, he was more than just spooky. he was freakish, and uncomfortable, and alluring.

now, fox is no idiot. in fact, to even think your interest was going unnoticed was a major misjudgment of his perceptive abilities; the man is the best analyst in the crime division, for god’s sake. he's never missed a clue. yet somehow, in the midst of your innocent stalking, you’d imagined he never saw you standing in his basement hallway, or mingling in the first-floor break room by the irish cream. naivety never crossed into your work, but it clouded your visions when it came to him. he’d seen you every time, shifty eyes fidgeting with blatant secrecy. when the man who didn’t believe in random events saw you more than once, he began following your lead.

fox mulder kept copies of your personal files on his desk and sifted through them often, trying to get any information on you to substantiate why you paid so much attention to him. aside from his widespread suspicion, he also had a sense for intent, and he felt you were of no harm. even lurking in the shadows, there was a comfort to your presence. that might be his creepy personality being used to unsettling beings, but he didn’t mind. he liked catching you looking. he liked the way your suit jacket never matched your pants, but always somehow coordinated even in clashing patterns. he liked how your hair curled like french fries at the bottom, wide and loose. he liked how your manicured nails were always dark and sharp, and blatantly against bureau policy. fox knew you were as new to the fbi as he, so not new at all, but a child to seasoned agents; he learned of your ridiculous retention of information, and that you read twice the clocked words per minute of the average american. he knew of your graduation from yale and your speedy completion of the academy, as well as your elevated skill for firearms, which immunized you from a majority of field training. he knows about your secret connection, yet not who it’s with, and that it’s ushered you into a disguised deep-level position. in less legal ways of determining, the agent discovered you were the president of your high school’s history club, as well as the chief editor of the newsletter, and your family had a summer cabin on the oregon coast. you were smart, valuable, integral, even- and your talents were being wasted under cover of the monotonous filing department. he knew more than you realized. but even with his disturbing understanding of you, fox couldn’t figure out why it was him you watched- you had no connection to him, no link to his work or anyone who aimed to sabotage it. of all your secrets, he seemed to be the biggest.

you’d never expected anything to come of your little infatuation, but fox mulder didn’t like to let things linger. so when you just so happened to be venturing into the basement for something in the archived evidence room, he went into pursuit. you swiped your key card in the automatic door, and he followed you inside and made sure to close it nice and loud behind you. the lock clicked, causing you to jump out of your skin, and he laughed.

“not a fan of followers, huh?” the man teased.

“you just locked us in here, sir!” you nearly choked. you’d never seen him up close and personal. his shirt was a wrinkled mess, but it looked so nice rolled up on his fair-skinned arms, and his hair was a lot darker in person than it looked in the pictures. so were his eyes.

“sir? no, nobody calls me sir.”

“what should i call you, then?” you groaned.

“agent mulder. spooky mulder. basement boy. whatever floats your boat!”

“well, then, agent mulder,” you elected, “you just locked us in here!”

“is that what you’re worried about? don’t worry, i'm sure agent scully will come down soon enough. or maybe not. maybe you’re stuck in here with me.”

you pivoted and began walking down the first aisle of archives, trying to come up with something to grab to avoid blowing your cover. fox kept at your heels, poking his head playfully into your eyeline.

“looking for something… you?” he inquired.

“that’s agent to you.”

“no name? ooo… spooky,” he wiggled his eyebrows, and you suppressed the fluttering in your stomach. you thought in frustration, how dare he make wordplay hot?

“says you.” you negated.

“so you do know me!”

“everyone knows you, agent mulder.”

“oh, sure… but you’ve been watching me, haven’t you?”

you stopped between the alphabetized boxes marked by Hs and Js, biting your tongue. you watched as fox sauntered around to the front of you, leaning nonchalantly against the filing shelf and smirking. his hand raised to wipe his mouth, and you analyzed the rough calluses and ink splotches carving uniqueness into his knuckles. a deep cut rested along his thumbnail down to his wrist. you recognized it as a healed-over wound from an inconclusive case months ago- something he claimed to have involved lizard men.

“i- i’m not sure what you mean.”

“you’ve been following me around, taking note of what i do. i see you every day. sometimes in the break room, sometimes in the bullpen by the car desk, sometimes shooting guns down at the range room on saturdays like i usually am. you’re always… floating around.'' fox mused, running a hand through his thick hair. a few pieces curled agonizingly over the frame of his face, and you felt like dying.

“must be coincidences.”

“you know well as me that there are no such things as coincidences,” fox stated, “there are simply events that occur, and more often than not, they occur causally, or in my case, through spurious correlation, but nobody can ever seem to pinpoint the third invisible factor that links one event to another, except for me.”

“speak english, agent mulder, would you?”

“you’ve been following me, which caused me to notice you, which caused you to pretend you haven’t been, and so forth,” he sighed, “but you know what i’m saying, don’t lie. you’re a yale alumni, graduated summa cum laude with a double major in psychology and international affairs. you’re one of the smartest women in the building. so why are you acting dumb?”

your stomach flipped as he stepped closer to you, leaning down in all his six-foot glory to meet your gaze. swallowing thickly, you shoved your hand in a box labeled CONFISCATED Ka-Kz and fished out the first object you grasped: a bloodied kazoo. wincing in embarrassment, you waved it in his face and grimaced.

“i'm just down here for this.”

“for a murder kazoo.” he deadpanned.

“…yes.”

you turned away and began heading for the door, but a strong palm wrapped around your wrist, halting your stride. fox tugged you back, and you tried to keep your drooling gaze to a minimum at how handsome he looked when he was searching for answers.

“if you tell me what you want from me, i'll let you go.”

“i don't want anything.”

“bullshit,” the agent rolled his eyes, “everyone wants something, agent, even you. you’re a bad liar, you know that? that’s why you’re not under deep cover.”

how little you know, you thought with a smirk. “well, not everyone is made for danger.”

“no. you’re just made for stalking.”

you seized up, “i am not stalking you!”

fox grinned, liking how worked up you were becoming. “then why are you always in the corner of my eye, agent?”

you huffed in desperation, weighing your options. you could,

a) keep lying.

b) tell fox the truth.

c) bang on the locked door and scream until someone saves you from spooky mulder.

none of your options were appealing, but you weren’t getting out of here if you didn’t choose. option A would drag it out, and option C would get him fired, so you only had one path if you wanted to control casualties and your level of embarrassment in one shot.

as he stood patiently waiting, tie so horrendously knotted that it took all your willpower not to tug him down by it, you gave in.

“well, agent mulder, you… you’re interesting.”

“am i?”

“y-yes. you do amazing work. you catch killers. and you… write beautifully.”

fox chuckled softly, “you like my writing? what, are you the one who files my field reports or something?”

now may not be a good time to admit you tweaked the computer system to always assign you files submitted by agents between L and P in the alphabet just to be the sole individual who received fox’s files, so you withheld the truth a bit. it will come back to bite you in the ass when he looks into the signatures on his official paperwork, but oh, well.

“every so often,” is what you settled on. “you have something to say, and you say it like you’ve been contemplating the proper phrasing forever. it’s always so eloquent and intelligent and… fascinating.” you stopped praising him, feeling shame wash over you like a bad shot of vodka.

“well, aren’t you a regular fan?” fox rested his head against the filing shelf, eyes raising to the ceiling. his neck stretched open far enough that you could watch his adam's apple bob as he spoke. “glad to know my conclusions aren’t just the ramblings of a lunatic.”

“quite the opposite, agent mulder.” you blushed.

fox looked back down to you, and his puppy dog eyes bore holes into your cheeks. “i know a lot about you, you know. i know where you went to high school. i know you also use the irish cream for your cup of joe every day. i know you drive that baby blue car out in the garage, with the stupid “honk if you love labs” bumper sticker. but what i don't know, agent, or rather what i can’t figure out, is why you’re working in the filing department when you should be on an analyst team, or why you’re so insistent on following me around work. so, can you enlighten me with the truth?”

the truth. even when encountering you, his true colors show. you would be frustrated if it wasn’t so attractive how he interrogated you.

with a shaky breath as support, you said, “i want to know you.”

“is that all? you just… want to know me?”

“we don't work together. you’re too off-limits. my orders require me to stick to the mundane and watch from afar. but you, agent mulder, you are never mundane. you sit down here every day and crane over horrific cases, imagining the unimaginable, and all in the stuffy confines of a basement office that people would rather die than visit you in. y-you’re terrifying, you’re… fresh air.”

fox would never admit to it, but his entire body experienced pins and needles at the sound of your voice. in the least creepy way possible, you reminded him of the school librarian from his childhood- thin glasses, a loose blouse, and a voice thick and sweet, just how he liked his coffee.

“well, as the resident spooky one around here, i'd say you’re more freakish than me. you’re quite the stalker.”

“that's my business.”

you put the kazoo back in the box, frustrated you even attempted to jeopardize the secrecy of your nature for being down in the basement. fox’s hazel eyes followed your lethal nails as they replaced the object, and he wondered if they hurt when they grazed skin. a part of him really wanted to find out.

the man huffed, “so that’s it? no plans to kill me, or turn me in to the boss for my beliefs?”

“nope. just… watching from a distance.”

“you could watch up close if you wanted to. i could really benefit from someone so smart as you are, and someone who has such a knack for detail,” he teased. “you seem to have a way with words yourself, agent.”

“well, i appreciate the offer, but my hands are full as it is, agent mulder.”

“call me fox.”

in a flustered blackout, you blurted, “but no one calls you fox!” and the agent’s pupils blew wide.

somehow, deep inside, the idea of you knowing his secrets without ever speaking to him turned him on. you were a watcher, and as a profiler he’d even go so far as to call you a creep- a girl with a case of muldermania following his every move and sniffing the air when he walked past. he saw it in how your hands shook before him, how you craned your neck back in submission, how your eyes darted between his eyes and lips with fervor; how you swallowed nothing every five seconds in what he couldn’t discern between fear and anticipation. you had slightly sick motivations, so driven by the feeling his writing gave you and the idea of what it must be like to be inside his mind. and he liked it. he liked being studied, and understood, and having no say in it being done by a pretty girl like you. the man took another step closer this time, and you didn’t budge. this was one of his personal space invasions he’s so famous for- the kind people complain about when they’re put on the job with him. also the kind you’d dreamt of since you learned of his existence beneath the bureau.

“but you do when you think of me, don’t you?” he crooned, knowing how to play you from one freak to another. “when you think of watching me when you’re alone, and how we might interact. you call me fox in that pretty little head of yours, right? so say it.”

“w-well…”

“come on, don’t leave me hanging.”

you licked your lips as the heat of his breath danced across your face, and you flushed. “a-as much as i'd love to stay and talk, i have my obligations. not everyone is at your whim, fox.”

in a hormonal lapse, fox let out a soft, “mmm,” and flashed his adorable grin for you to fuss over. “that's too bad, then.”

“but,” you interrupted, “if you ever need, um, proofreading… or help, i can- you can, uh, maybe leave me a note? or something?”

“on your desk? in the filing department, right? in that office with the blue walls and the photograph of you and your chocolate lab, the one who inspired your bumper sticker, agent?” fox revealed, showing his intellectual hand.

with a dry mouth, you mustered a meek, “yeah, that’s the one.”

“good. maybe i'll spray it with my cologne, so you can savor the moment.”

“excuse me?” you squeaked.

“come on, agent,” fox winked, “just a joke. unless you’d like that, y’know, i won’t judge.”

and of course you would. he smelled like dust and paper, with a little sugar left from the coffee he drinks, and a little smoke from the candles he lights when they turn the lights off on him overnight in that dark hole of an office.

“you live up to your name, spooky mulder,” you bit your lip.

“so do you,” fox agreed, “what would we do without our eyes and ears?”

“… what did you just say?” you could barely muster a voice.

“you heard me.”

fox slipped a hand in his suit pant pocket and revealed your business card- not the filing office one, but for your cover. you have no idea how he’d gotten one, because the only place you keep them is in the locked safe beneath your desk. you were in bold, with your full name, position, boss, and reserved extension line. you thought of fox breaking into your office at night- while you were at home having dreams you’d never admit to- and sifting through your belongings, touching all that was yours, cracking open your secrets. you shuddered as he placed the card gently in your hand, his fingers trailing against the veins at the center of your wrist, where he could feel your pulse hammering.

the man slid past you in a split second, heading for the evidence room door and jiggling the handle upwards. when it unlocked, he shot a premeditated glance towards your mortified face and said, “somebody ought to get this fixed. see you around, agent.”

just about shaking, you stood in the aisle, dizzy from the sound of his departure and how every word fell from his lips with such intention. after a moment of weakness in which you let yourself lean against the filing shelf and catch your breath, you straightened out your blazer and made for the door. when you came into the hallway, you saw spooky mulder standing in his doorframe, thumbing through a file with his silver-rimmed glasses sliding down the bridge of his nose. you turned quickly towards the stairs and left him to his devices, those being the file that was full of pictures of you.

all this time admiring from afar made you feel like a fool. now you were stuck with a lingering conversation and the overwhelming urge to visit the archives again, because someone downstairs had his eye on you. he knew you by way of his own eyes and ears, and there are a few things that aren’t in your files he’d like to learn.

and to think you were the stalker!

#Spotify #spooky mulder #x files #fox mulder #dana scully #fox mulder x reader #fox mulder smut #fox mulder fluff #fox mulder x you #fox mulder x reader fluff #something between smut and fluff idk #obsessive love #stalker #msr fanfic #msr #sculder

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church-of-lilith · 8 months

Text

Vinylatte Good Omens Fic Masterlist

the maggie/nina tag on ao3 post season 2 has been almost impossible to navigate if you’re trying to find actual fics of them. so i decided that i would compile all of them i could find and put them here in one place for anyone who’s been looking.

**denotes fics where they’re more of a background pairing, but still prevalent

Pre-Season Fics

Shrinking Violet by deathbymistletoe

Really cute one shot written and published after the early screening of the first two episodes. Explores Maggie’s feelings for Nina but is canon divergent after 2x02

divine intervention by literary_lesbian

In which Nina thinks her intentions are pretty clear, but Maggie needs a bit more reassurance.

all this (and heaven, too) by literary_lesbian

5 times Nina & Maggie assume Aziraphale & Crowley are together + the 1 time they actually are.

Collections/Series

Atlas (then suddenly, I saw you) by Andnever_ever_eatpears

A collection of fics set throughout Maggie & Nina’s relationship. Currently at 8 works but the author says there’s 11 planned so definitely keep an eye on this one!

When I’m Ready I Hope She’ll Be There by gutsandglitter (@applebottomclaudiajeans)

A collection of fics that take us through Maggie & Nina’s relationship as it develops. Currently at 4 works and they’re some of the sweetest most well written stories you’ll ever read.

One Shots

The times, they are a-changing by WrittenMemxries

4 times Nina enters Maggie’s shop + 1 time she enters her house

i’m begging for you to take my hand, wreck my plans, that’s my (wo)man by Lavenderknives (@lavenderknivess)

Maggie is closing up the record store, but Nina has something she wants to say.

lost in your current like a priceless kombucha by Lavenderknives (@lavenderknivess)

Short crack-ish fic where Maggie makes her own kombucha and brings some to Nina.

my, my, how can i resist you by Lavenderknives (@lavenderknivess)

Maggie and Nina have a silly little movie night because they deserve it!

and she aches (just like a woman) by literary_lesbian

A year after The Whickber Street Traders and Shopkeepers Association meeting, Nina comes to terms with what she really wants.

and yet it moves by literary_lesbian**

Aziraphale knows he should leave Earth behind entirely, if he means to take his role in reforming Heaven seriously. But when Maggie calls out to him, he can’t help but listen in. He never was very good at following the rules, even his own.

a new light by literary_lesbian

Nina has always hated the holiday season and the decorations her fellow Shopkeepers on Whickber Street enjoy utilizing to the extreme, year after year after… Until Maggie comes along and sheds some light on a few things.

terms of endearment by literary_lesbian**

In which Crowley learns something new about humanity, and he and Aziraphale finally come to terms with their feelings.

hymns for a broken heart by andiwriteordie

Five records Maggie gives to Crowley, plus one she gives to Aziraphale

worm-hearted by findmebythemilkway**

“Would you still love Mr. Fell if he was a worm?” Maggie blurts out and immediately blushes. Nina snorts in her respective corner. Crowley, who’s been busy eyeing both the television and the bookshop, redirects his eyes to her. Maggie offers him a toothy grin. “I’m… sorry?” Crowley asks. He can’t wait for Aziraphale to arrive and hear this.

I’m ready by Culties

Nina has a confession to make and reminisces on her relationship with Maggie so far.

Like Real People Do by My__name__Leo**

Aziraphale and Crowley are on a double date with Nina and Maggie. But what happens when Crowley gets overwhelmed?

who wants to live forever? by lovelosvers**

“Maggie,” he turns mock serious. “Would you describe The Velvet Underground as bebop?” She looks bewildered. “Never in a million years,” she says. “So you see my point, then,” Crowley grins.

Tilt by DoonaRose

Maggie tells Aziraphale that her and Nina have started a relationship but that he can’t tell Crowley because Nina doesn’t want to hear ‘I told you so’. Aziraphale tells Crowley because he can’t help himself and then Crowley decides to show Nina that him and Aziraphale are also now doing the kissing and being a couple thing.

a little uncertainty by TheTellersEye

Maggie and Nina talking about the future and being cute.

Mr. Fell is Back by ughdotcom

Mr. Fell is back. Nina and Maggie have a few comments.

Multi-Chapter Fics

Moving On by neowitcher

Maggie and Nina have endured a lot in a short amount of time and now that Aziraphale is off to Heaven, any heavenly or demonic threats seem to have departed. Now, the two women are left spending their days in each other's company and are steadily growing fonder of each other. Maggie fears she's moving too fast when all Nina wants to do is move on.

The Third Fall by cordsycord

The Second Coming of Jesus Christ, son of God, came to Earth, against the predictions of dozens prominent religious scholars, on the relatively normal day of June 21st 2024, four months before the Earth's 6028th birthday. It was raining in London. The M25 was backed up. The Tube was late arriving to one station, and early arriving to another. Tourists took pictures at all the places that tourists enjoy taking pictures at.

Coming Back Around by CLOVERTOWN3

After Aziraphale leaves Earth, Crowley is left to drown in his sorrow. Together, Maggie and Nina weigh the tasks of keeping Crowley in check and solving the mystery of Aziraphale's strange and sudden promotion. All the while Muriel learns more about love, heaven, and the nature of humanity.

Whickber Street Relationship Counseling (And Rescue Service) by staroversea

The incredible true story of how 8 shopkeepers become responsible for a very emotionally fragile demon.

Uncharted Territory by Justanothernerdsstuff

Seven months after Aziraphale took his new position in heaven, Crowley is coping the best he can.

Most Ardently by borealisaurora**

Aziraphale brings Pride and Prejudice with him to Heaven, and with its help and the help of some friends, he realizes where he went wrong with Crowley and what he needs to do to fix it.

We Could’ve Been Us by elusive_ellipsis**

Aziraphale's last words to the one being he could ever say he loved were "I forgive you," but he knows that Crowley will never forgive him. Nina and Maggie try to convince him that he can make it up to the demon, but Aziraphale is only staying on Earth until he accepts that their relationship is truly over.

You’re Crashing but You’re no Wave, You’re Just an Angel Cast out of Heaven by Blueleaf12

Where is Crowley supposed to go after the Metatron whisked Aziraphale away to heaven? Bunk across the hall from where the Archangel Gabriel once resided in Aziraphale’s bookshop? Fuck no, now was the time to mope with those two human women you royally messed up trying to get together.

Something lasts forever by Aidaran

After Aziraphale leaves, Crowley is left to drink himself to death and be just as miserable as he can be. Lucky for him, Nina doesn't have patience for drunk demons in his shop, and Maggie is always willing to give a helping hand.

what it all comes down to by dollsome**

Aziraphale starts sneaking out of Heaven to visit Give Me Coffee or Give Me Death. It helps immensely.

Shepherds of the Damned by angelwithawand**

After Aziraphale leaves, Crowley carves out a life of his own.

on the inside and no sunlight by the_moonmoth**

In which Crowley makes some friends, Aziraphale does some thinking, and they both learn a thing or two about communication

#good omens #good omens 2 #good omens fanfiction #good omens fanfic #vinylatte #ineffable husbands #ineffable bureaucracy #ineffable husbands fanfic #aziraphale x crowley #maggie x nina #crowley #aziraphale #maggie good omens #nina good omens #muriel #vinylatte fanfic #fanfic masterpost

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ladykinrannoch · 2 months

Note

I’m sorry I know you have an interest in tarot yourself but I’ve realized the tarot readers may be where all the nasty rumors are starting. There’s also one astrologer blog here saying there’s an upcoming storm for the Wales fandom, and the way this blog says it, it’s like something really ominous. I tend to be a pessimistic person who always thinks things are going to go badly, which is why I find it hard to brush it off when some random person on the internet is saying stuff like that as much as I just want to ignore it or brush it off as nonsense. I have to say I am not very good with differentiating between anxiety and intuition. I tend to be a bit paranoid. Idk if this is just paranoia, but I am scared for the coming days because of this particular blog’s warnings.

So this is an interesting observation and reminds me of a discussion we had at our Church of Wiccan Culture last week about living a spiritual life in the mundane world and one in which there are lots of muggles, and one of the most common tools we discussed was employing discernment. So this answer is not about tarot, it is about living in the divine light and how to do that! But this post also led me rather nicely into a Saturday Morning Tarot by Lady Kinrannoch. (skip to the end if you don't want to read the preamble)

As I foresaw and said to my then husband back in 2007 that it seemed to me that social media had the potential to become evil, in fact I asked him whether social media was possibly an aspect of Satan. This is long before I turned from institutional religion to embrace the Old Ways and Old Gods. Satan is a construct of organised religion, it is meant to keep you in line through fear and guilt. My journey to enlightenment started then as I began to embrace the aspects of me that always meant I felt like I did not fit in, and did not get answers in the bible or from religion. I started reading the Gnostic texts, explored Kabbalah, esoterism, hermeticism etc. and more and more I was drawn to Paganism or what we call The Wiccan Way. (please note that Paganism is an umbrella term and that not all Pagans are Wiccans, there are many denominations of earth-based religions that identify as Pagans)

Now Pagan's are naturally drawn to nature and all that was created by the Divine Mother. Not man-made interventions. We believe that Mother Nature/Earth (Gaia) has provided everything we need to survive and that with the assistance of the Old Gods, we can awaken the Divine inside us and manifest love and light. It is why we are often referred to as light workers. We do not believe in Satan, but we do believe in "good and evil", in the aspects of light and dark (in Eastern religion Ying/Yang). No one is all light, everyone has some dark or shadow aspect. The Old Gods across multiple pantheons have light and dark aspects and represent the various Archetypes in the same way that the Tarot Major Arcana represent the 22 main Archetypes. So the discussion was about how to identify when you move off the path of the light and begin to become overcome by the darkness. When people are overcome by the darkness, they tend to become toxic, cultist and abusive; or depressed, anxious and stuck in victim energy, sort of fatalistic, giving up and giving in to Fate. There are many dark cults that frequently get incorrectly associated with Paganism and it is important to use discernment to avoid dark cults. True Paganism is about celebrating nature and following the light, which is why we have many fire festivals among the Sabbats in the Wheel of the Year.

Now I think we see this dark aspect of social media manifesting more and more where various groups of people are pushing their various agenda's. Back in the days with no social media platforms, there is no way you would have managed to get 70 to 80% of a population vaccinated with a trial vaccines with numerous early-on discovered side effects. I am not a denialist, I know there was risk with Covid which it now seems was indeed bio-engineered as part of a global plan to seize totalitarian control. I decided early on that I would not comply, I searched the Old Ways and naturopathy for solutions. I started a regime of supplements that made sense to me. and was also recommended by the FLCCC in the US by Dr Kory and Dr Malik. I have never had Covid despite meeting up with people with Covid to give them IvermectIn (ivm) for themselves or sick relatives. I have access to IVM because I have a breeding and show kennel and so I could order it via veterinary dispensers. Through the pandemic, my staff and I took it every week. None of us got sick. We stopped taking it weekly when Omicron started (Mother Nature, Gaia's intervention). Now we use it whenever one of us is coming down with something. Just this week I felt I was coming down with the flu that is doing the rounds, I took one dose and the next day I was 100% fine again. I take my supplements every day and spend time in the Sun, at least 15 minutes with no sunscreen and visualise filling my body with healing vitamin D.

As you can imagine, I was called a conspiracy theorist. But I like asking the big What if questions. And I use discernment, scepticism and intuition in equal measure daily. I believe that despite none of my staff or I taking the vaccine, we never got sick. I see vaccinated colleagues every day, with all sorts of maladies, ranging from messed up menstrual cycles, all the way through to late term still birth, high blood pressure, blood clots, high blood pressure, septicaemia, heart attacks, auto immune diseases and turbo cancers. I have lost many dear friends over the last four years, all of them vaccinated and it absolutely breaks my heart.

The point to this long preamble ramble is presenting an example in how discernment, scepticism and intuition can play a role in your life if you tune into it and employ it. If you are feeling anxious and depressed by all that you are consuming on social media, perhaps it is time to question yourself about who you are following, what are you consuming, why you are giving your divine manifestation over to the control of others. For we as Pagans believe that the Divine is not out there in nebulous outer space, but that we are part of the Divine and the Divine lives in each one of us. We just need to awaken the Divine inside and listen in the stillness to that spark and that voice.

Anon, I suggest that your intuition is telling to you not to trust what you are consuming, use discernment, scepticism and intuition to decide who to unfollow and what to allow into your divine consciousness. Follow only those that are clearly on a path of spiritual enlightenment with no specific personal and/or dark agenda. Be sceptical. If you feel like something is rubbish, discard it. Don't allow unnecessary darkness into your soul. It is a choice to stand in the light and defeat darkness.

Reading - For Anon and for the Wales Family - Intuition, Commanding all Resources, Healing and Hope

For your benefit, I have done a short tarot spread for you. Just three cards for you to contemplate.

This is what I got:

Situation: The High Priestess, this is confirmation to me that you need to start trusting your intuition. This is also a card typically representing secrets. Not many tarot readers explore that meaning nearly deeply enough. This card's message is Explore your Spiritual Side.

Tarot is a pagan divination tool. For me, this card is also a message of guidance to seek out the secrets of the universe in the quest To Know, which is the first step in the Witches Pyramid. (To Know, To Dare, To Will, To be Silent and To Go). The pentacle is one of the suits in Tarot for a reason. It's five points also represents the four elements associated with tarot, Earth, Air, Fire and Water, with the pinnacle of the pentacle representing Spirit/Divine. I will put a link to an article at the end for those that want to read more.

What happens next: The Emperor, this is commanding and utilising all your talents and resources to bring order from chaos. It is telling me that you have tools to take command of your life and employ discernment. This links beautiful to To Will (manifest through commitment) and To Dare (to develop skills, to make courageous choices). This card's message is Take Control You Are Protected.

The Outcome: The Star, which in RW its core meaning is healing and hope. It is also for me about achieving balance in your life, turning to nature and the elements. Listening to the Divine and links quite beautifully to To be Silent (Introspection), for in the stillness of meditation you find answers. And also links to To Go (wisdom/higher self), to go within in search of the light and the dark, which increases your Knowing, and so repeatedly following this cycle increases intuition, healing and hope as well as growing your inner peace. You cannot know the Divine, until you Know Thyself. This card's message is Be Inspired Dreams Come True.

Underlying energy: Four of Swords, retreat and rest, take yourself away from social media for a while, avoid negativity, focus on goodness and follow the light until you feel better and stronger.

Other observations:

Three major arcana cards, this is absolutely beautiful energy and I don't think it is meant only for you. Three major arcana cards, means this is for everyone who is feeling just like you, anxious, depressed and paranoid.

Royal Reading - The Wales's

High Priestess: There is a reason there is a certain amount of secrecy currently, it doesn't mean we should feed into the dark speculation, but should rather trust our intuition and the divine mother who Knows All. We are being told that there are some people who cannot be trusted right now to know everything. I think this is Catherine, giving us a message. She is in a higher energy right now and following her intuition. Only she is in the Know, as it should be. This is the also the all knowing, wise mother archetype.

Emperor: William is in Emperor energy, he is giving us a message that he is very much in charge right now. So I feel this is him saying to us all "don't worry". Remember also this is King of Kings energy (The Emperor is higher than the four court Kings), and let us remember that William is the Summer Solstice King, brought to us to show us the light, and give us hope.

Star: There is a lot of hope for the future and healing for the family and I believe it will result in good news. I genuinely feel that we have nothing to fear. There is no ominous energy here. As I said it all beautiful and powerful energy.

Middle of the Deck: The Queen of Wands RX - that is who we should watch out for. The dark agenda. This truly is a fight between darkness and light. Wands is also media and PR. Discern the agenda around every piece of speculation in the media for it is all only speculation. This tells me the Wales's know more than we do about the agendas and it is a cautionary message from them, to do exactly what my preamble was about, practice discernment.

Four of Swords: Retreating to find strength and healing. We do not know all of what they are battling, just what we see in the dark media agenda and the attacks from the unenlightened. Remember that light always triumphs over darkness. This tells me that the Wales's withdrawal is for a very strategic reason. The Art of War reminds us that we "should not interrupt our enemies when they are making mistakes". Stand back and allow them to defeat themselves. Also find the light and strengthen yourself in order to overcome the darkness. So the Stand Back strategy as I am calling it is very deliberate.

https://exemplore.com/wicca-witchcraft/Witchcraft-for-Beginners-What-Is-The-Witches-Pyramid

#british royal family #royal reading #tarot #tarot by ladykinrannoch #prince william #princess of wales

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be-the-glenn-to-my-maggie · 1 year

Note

I’m so excited for ur Jetiri au 🤭🤭🤭

Me fucking too. And just because you asked, why don't we move the draft I've been working on right over here for you. I'm assuming you mean my modern au wheelchair Jake jeytiri shit, so that's what this is:

Quick recap from the Tommy post:

-Tommy was on a four year job with Grace studying botany in the rainforest in Brazil when Jake was paralyzed. Jake knew how excited he was about this once in a lifetime experience, and basically threatened to end Norm if he tattled to Tommy.

-Norm's solution was getting Jake into Mo'at's free clinic on a favor. He'd volunteered there a lot while he was getting his medical degree and ended up liking it so much he works there when he's got a free moment between research and projects. So he has a tiny bit of leeway to beg for a spot for Jake from Mo'at and Sylwanin.

-Jake is not the normal clientele for the free clinic. They are on the edge of the reservation, and mostly only cater to the native population and those nearby. Sylwanin tells Norm this, but Mo'at is pretty sure this'll work out. She can just tell that for some reason they need Jake just as much as he needs them.

-When Jake first shows up, Neytiri has last minute replaced Sylwanin for the month because she had to fill in for a doctor who had to go on emergency leave a few counties over. Jake will later insist this was divine intervention, whereas at the time Neytiri was fairly sure she was being punished.

-Neytiri is eighteen and freshly graduated from high school, and completely sure she does NOT want to work in the free clinic for the rest of her life. She isn't exactly sure what she will do, but it'll be something big and life changing.

-Jake is twenty-two and his life is over. He went from being a promising young marine one second, to being a burden on everyone around him the next. And now even this girl at the clinic is forced to deal with him when she wasn't supposed to.

-They start of very slow, with halfhearted attempts at weightlifting that Jake's heart is clearly not in very much. Neytiri starts to get a little more invested. She insists that he needs more wheelchair dexterity training, and stands on the back of his chair and makes Jake cart her around to all her other patients for a week. At first it was a joke but it quickly becomes a floor is lava type situation, where if she touches the ground she looses. She takes them swimming in the pond, forces Tsu'tey to help her create a wheelchair obstacle course and then makes he and Neytiri take turns racing Jake through it, takes him to an archery range for the arm strength.

-They start to get more and more ridiculous as she becomes pretty sure what Jake needs is to realize he can still do everything he wants. They go skydiving, play paintball, and go on a hike when Norm manages to rig a chair with wheels that go outdoors better.

-O b v i o u s l y one of the most important tests/exercises they do regularly is just like, making sure his dick works. Just to check. Gotta be sure.

-When Sylwanin comes back and asks her mother where Neytiri is so she can say hi, Mo'at rolls her eyes. Sylwanin is then almost run over by the classic daily Neytiri and Jake wheelchair race, who both then start demanding Mo'at declare them the winner. Mo'at picks Jake because she loves bothering Neytiri (and her soft spot for Jake is as well hidden as the sun) and Neytiri once again blames his experience and they bicker as she jumps on Jake's lap for a ride to her next patient.

-Sylwanin: ...wha-

Mo'at: shhhhh. Let it happen.

-The not so secret reason that Jake was at the clinic was less for his recovery and more for the literal depression he clearly had. It was Norm's "I will not rat you out to Tommy" condition. Jake considers himself all cured of that shit now, Norm, but everyone else isn't so sure. They all have come to love (and be super annoyed by) Jake and Neytiri together, but it's important Jake is able to be not depressed without Neytiri there.

-Jake: psh, why do I need to be happy without Neytiri?

Norm: because it's normal and healthy, Jake.

Jake: okay but what you are asking for is literally impossible.

-They give him a week. A week at home, NO NEYTIRI. The week does pass, and it actually goes well for Jake. He takes some independent trips in his brand new Norm finagled (bc the real ones are crazy expensive) Jake drivable truck, he works out on his own, reconnects with his old friend Trudy from the marines. He feels competent. He can't help but feel like he owes that confidence to Neytiri.

-Neytiri is noticeably sulking around the clinic, to the point that Sylwanin almost ALMOST calls Jake for her. It's insane. They're known each other for like three months at this point. Sylwanin has known her fiance her entire life, and she loves Tsu'tey, but sometimes he drives her crazy. They survived her month away, and she has work trips often.

-When Jake pulls back up to the clinic on his own in his own truck, they have the most dramatic reunion ever. It's like something out of a romcom. The regulars HAVE to applaud.

-It's to almost no ones surprise that when Jake announces his intention to head out traveling, Neytiri announces she'll be going with him. They spend the summer sending pictures from Niagara Falls, The Great Canyon, Arashiyama Bamboo Grove, the black sand beaches in Iceland, The Great Barrier Reef, Vaadhoo Island and many other places.

-They return happy, married, and pregnant; again, to no ones surprise (although Sylwanin manages to muster up a little outrage).

-Norm is so close to ratting Jake out to Tommy at this point.

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adelaidedrubman · 7 months

Text

why does it always have to be wednesday

tagged today my dears @socially-awkward-skeleton @direwombat @inafieldofdaisies today to share a wip! thank you my beloveds

sadly i haven’t had the brain functioning to make progress on anything much besides the sexless kinktober oneshot i won’t inflict on the general masses, so you’re getting some older america’s sweetheart epilogue that was written/occurs before the excerpt i posted last week from the same scene (and which i also posted a small excerpt of before unprompted)

Long, wild cascades of copper dyed deep crimson fluttered in the wind, a too-bold contrast against the rich green of the pines to grant Jestiny any semblance of stealth as she ran. She made a futile effort at weaving herself into the shadows, darting in the thick of the forest where trees grew denser. Her own heavy panting drowned out the crunch of footsteps against brittle grass, so that she had to glance quickly over her shoulder to see how close he’d managed to follow her — too close, the glint of a silver blade popping out from the tree trunk behind her.

She ducked — just in time for sharpened steel to bury itself into bark rather than her skull. But her efforts at bolting further forward were still met with pain splitting along her skull —an ear-splitting shriek burst from Jestiny’s lips as she found her long hair caught and twisted in a low-hanging branch. “Divine intervention,” the knife-wielding man exclaimed with a demented laugh as he caught the hand reaching to yank hair from the branch. “How many times must it happen before you see God is on my side?” Tears welled in her eyes as she struggled, thrashing her head back and forth in an effort to pull her hair free. “Just get away from me!” “Oh, Deputy.” John released her wrist, weaving the fingers of the freed hand in the length of taut-pulled hair to grip and shove her against the tree trunk, guiding the tip of the knife to the throb of her jugular. “Did you really think we wouldn’t meet again? That a gang of sinners with badges blazing in to save the day would be the end of it, simple as that?” “So you’re going to end it now?” she croaked out, defiant, blinking away her tears. “You’re gonna really kill me, this time?” she asked, darting her eyes between gleaming silver and unblinking blue. “Or — Or just skin me alive?” “Not today,” he answered, tracing the tip of the knife along her jawline, up to the dip beneath her ear. “Your death and your Atonement are yet to be scheduled,” he purred, dripping with sadistic delight as he raised his arm, pulling the fistful of hair high enough she was lifted off the ground by it. “But…” His eyes finally left hers, ratcheting upwards to focus on the length of hair he held stretched against the trunk of the tree as he muttered, almost as a recitation to himself, “But I need to cut something up…” With that, he dragged the blade across the copper flattened along the tree — her hair falling to brush along her jaw as she dropped to the ground with the tether she’d hung suspended by severed. She curled her finger into the brittle grass, balling into fists as she lifted her head to look up at him, tears streaming down her cheeks. “My hair!” she cried, throwing a hand up in defeat to rain confetti of crushed brown grass to fall onto her lap. “My beautiful, long hair! How could —” “And so, the Lord had left —” “Cut!” Jestiny screamed, stomping onto the set before Andrea could move to block her. “I mean, Jesus fucking Christ, pun intended — cut!” “That was the fourth wig today…” “That was the fourth shitty fucking take today!” Jestiny shouted in reply to the man shuffling his way back to the wardrobe department, before glaring between the actor playing herself and the man cast as John. “I mean — are y’all trying to fucking bomb? This is my life, people!” “This is my production,” the director said sternly from off set. “And only I say cut. Why do you keep interrupting perfectly good —” “Because it’s all fucking wrong!” Jestiny bellowed, waving an arm about wildly before taking a hearty gulp from her venti Starbucks cup, the stench of whiskey soaking heavy into the air as she did. “That’s not how any of it fuckin’ happened!” “Was the line wrong?” Flynn asked, lowering his prop knife. “Did I misquote, or —” “No, that’s what he said. Word for word.” “Then did we do something wrong?” Olivia pressed, taking off her wig. “Get something out of order or —” “No,” Jestiny answered. “That’s exactly how things went down when he chased me through the woods and chopped my hair off the day after the arrest.” “Then what’s wrong?” “The whole fucking tone of it, that’s what’s wrong,” she spat, beginning to frantically pace. “It lacks authenticity. It lacks intimacy. It —” She ran a hand through her hair. “Did you even read my memoir?”

tags out to my beloveds @quickhacked @jackiesarch @v0idbuggy @orionlancasterr @stacispratt @8bitpizzacoupons @strangefable @shallow-gravy @roofgeese @florbelles @josephslittledeputy @afarcryfrommymain @poetikat @just-another-wasteland-merc @voidika @captastra @confidentandgood @belorage @deputyash @blissfulalchemist @shellibisshe @thedeadthree @nightbloodbix @ladyofedens-blog @miyabilicious @simplegenius042 @henbased @clicheantagonist @firstaidspray @strafethesesinners + opt in for wip day tags here!

#again: only thing those unfamiliar with wildfire plot really need to know for context is he never cut her hair at all. she Did That #aka local women is wildly upset that the fake public persona she invented somehow doesn’t reflect her actual self-image or events #sad for her! best ending.#wip

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aimportantdragoncollector · 5 months

Note

I post comments on a lot of your fics and was typing up one about what if AFO watched Scarface instead of Captain Hero. Then the new leaks dropped.

I can't believe this could have been canon. It's a legit AU and not even a crack idea.

We could have a world where AFO took Kotaro from foster care and turned him into a druglord. By the way, he's not AFO. He's All For Drugs. AFD.

The kid eats expensive food every day, has a golden toilet, and there's drugs and money everywhere. There's a constant party lifestyle in AFD's mansion.

Kotaro looks around at this life, swallows a bite of Japanese A5 wagyu steak, and then redirects his anger.

A grown up, blinged out Kotaro is standing at the head of a massive gang of his enforcers. He's got a cane made of platinum in his hands and a grill in his mouth that spells out his name.

He's ranting at All Might about what a fool Nana and his dad were, because they wouldn't be bribed.

"You'll never understand what getting this money is like, All Might! You can't eliminate vice as long as humans live. You can't get rid of crime! But you can control it."

Kotaro asks him to name his price. All Might explains that he's impossible to buy.

All Might says he wants Nana back, and the other OFA holders too. He also wants all the people All For Drugs killed to be alive again. All Might asks if money can buy that.

He tells Kotaro that when you truly believe in something, you're willing to die for your beliefs. Your ideals are more important than you are. It doesn't make sense to Kotaro because he's selfish and has no higher values.

Kotaro calls him and fool and says that money are his morals. He asks what Nana, or the other OFA holders really got for all their defiance. They died like dogs and had nothing, and left behind people who cared about them. All they had to do was take bribes and they'd have been fine.

And so they're forced to fight.

AFD doesn't even care about OFA in this universe. What he wants is money, control, and power. He gave his brother a power so he'd understand what it's like when you can do whatever you want.

The guy didn't want to sell drugs. He ran off to join a vigilante organization. Yoichi got all his morals from Miami Vice in this universe. He, Second, and Third wear suits, drive fast sports cars and use guns.

AFD's calling people cockroaches and threatening to bury them. His last name isn't Shigaraki, it's Montana. He calls himself Tony.

Even after Kotaro's last stand, his kids are now part of AFD's empire.

This news that all of the boys morals came from fictional media can birth hundreds of AUs.

Especially ones based around divine intervention. Their story is like something out of roman myth.

I've never seen Scarface but that is a fun AU! It's interesting to imagine what could have happened if AFO had read different pieces of media instead of Captain Hero and based his life around them. I think it would have been funny if AFO and Yoichi had read a shoujo manga. Yoichi modeled himself after the male lead and became an arrogant ore-sama type, while AFO turned out normal because he empathized more with the second male lead. Or if they'd read an idol manga and AFO, who modeled himself off the villain, became a famous actor who liked to bully rookies. AFO read Star Wars and wanted to become Darth Vader but first he had to get into space, so he devoted his life to building spaceships. AFO read Charles Dickens and became a miserly businessman. Less harmlessly, AFO could have read a mythology book and started a cult. The possibilities are endless.

#bnha #All for One #Yoichi Shigaraki #bnha spoilers

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yourbelgianthings · 5 months

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rhododendron

a juno devine character study (titled after the state flower of west virginia)! post ep 28 spoilers, and i do believe her and duck actually knew each other when they were younger than when i have them meet in this fic but shh it's fine, ~560 words

Juno Devine. She had always felt like her name created shoes a bit bigger than she had ever been able to fill. The king of the Roman gods’ wife and then just the word divine (albeit spelled differently) didn’t exactly conjure the image of a small town forest ranger. That was okay with her though, it was more a recurring thought in the back of her head than a true worry. Her life had really turned out perfectly. Who knows where she would have ended up if not for Arlo Thacker’s intervention with seven-year-old Juno on the day of that fateful field trip? At any other job, she would have been perfectly competent, but never really satisfied, always glancing out the window and longing to be back outside. Luckily, though, the Monongahela National Forest became her home, almost even more so than her apartment in Kepler.

The best part of being a forest ranger was her colleagues. As a child, Juno never really connected with any of her classmates. After Thacker talked to them, they eased up some on the bullying, but she was still very lonely. Now, as an adult, she could have conversations on all the topics related to nature she was most passionate about and be met with the same level of enthusiasm from her fellow rangers. Duck Newton was the one that Juno found herself connecting with most. They started hanging out outside of work and became friends. It was difficult for Juno to be in silence with others, since it felt like all the times she had been ignored and invisible in the past, but this anxiety seemed to naturally dissolve with Duck. One warm summer night, when it was dark enough to see the stars, without a cloud in the sky, they met up by the river just as they had planned. Duck brought a blanket and some popcorn, Juno brought a couple hard lemonades, and they just enjoyed each other’s company and the perfect view of the stars without a word.

So, when things started getting strange in Kepler (or more so than usual), Juno trusted Duck to help handle it. Sure, she wished she had a better idea of what was going on (and something was obviously being covered up since Duck couldn’t lie for shit), and she didn’t really know Duck’s two weird friends, but if he thought they were good enough to work with then that must be the case. When things really went south, the FBI came to town, and all of a sudden Arlo Thacker showed back up on her doorstep asking her to basically commit a federal crime, what was she going to say? No? That absolutely wasn’t an option at the behest of the man who had set her life on the right track, and really, at this point, she would have joined the plan herself soon anyway. As a forest ranger, she worked for the government, but Juno’s first allegiance had always been to the flora and fauna and the land itself. The FBI coming in and closing off parts of the forest to set up their goddamn surveillance base camp wasn’t gonna stand. Not in her town. So she gave Thacker, now an old man, but still with the same twinkle in his eye as always, a big hug and promised to do everything she could. The fight was on.

#message from mirph #mirph's manuscripts #the adventure zone #taz amnesty #juno devine #ranger juno devine #duck newton #arlo thacker #taz fanfic #fanfic

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msviolacea · 1 year

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A not-so-short word vomit on a complaint I saw about 6.3. It was just a couple of people, so this is definitely not a “why is fandom like this” sort of thing, but the conversation I saw just made me think and I don’t have the time or energy to engage in a direct back and forth on Discord right now. So, I word vomit here, as one does.

I saw a thing the other day (here? Twitter? who knows, time is an illusion and brain cells are in short supply) that asked if you’re the kind of person who came to FFXIV from Dragon Age versus ... somewhere else. I am obviously from the Dragon Age side of things. And if there’s one thing DA fandom taught me, it’s that a game suffers when all players are expected to know what happens in ancillary non-video game materials in order to fully appreciate the story. Thus, I come down hard on the side of “what the game itself says is exactly what the characters should be expected to know and reference.”

And the FFXIV spoilers begin below. Assume spoilers for everything through 6.3 here.

So 6.3 - and 6.2 to a lesser extent, thanks to Zero - is full of references to Zenos and, quite frankly, what a terrible person he was. And that’s perfectly understandable, given what everyone knows about him in game. (And even what we know about him out of game, but more on the nuance of that later.) Yes, our WoL knows that he made one big gesture at the end of his life that helped us save the world. That’s great! But after that, he immediately challenged us to a fight and very nearly killed us - would have killed us if not for semi-divine intervention. Because in the end, he didn’t come to the end of the universe because he’d discovered a conscience. He came because he was a deeply selfish man who only cared about getting One Perfect Fight, and Alisaie’s words stuck in his head only to the point of “well if I do a thing for them, they’ll do a thing for me.” He only progressed to the point of understanding equivalent exchange in a similar way to the voidsent of the 13th.

That may have been vaguely fine for a character in another position, but he was supposedly running a country. Whether he wanted that is something else entirely, and we’ll get to a bit of Emet Selch and his crimes in a bit, but regardless of what he wanted, he had an obligation, and he failed it entirely - he refused to even consider it. And an entire nation suffered for his lack of care. That was one of the points of this patch. We met Zero in 6.2, learned that she’d been attached to Zenos against her will. That was mostly background to the rest of the dragon and void stuff in that patch, but in this patch, we bring her to Garlemald, where she sees more of the consequences of Zenos’s selfishness, outside of her own situation. And after observing us, our friends, and the people of Garlemald trying their best to survive together, she shows that she can choose something different - that despite the many, many years of darkness and selfishness she’s had to survive in the 13th, she has the capacity to desire something different.

Maybe Zenos would have displayed that same capacity if he’d had more time. But that wasn’t the story this game was telling. Not every character is going to get the same opportunities.

Not every villain gets to be redeemed.

I understand that we have a relatively robust history of redeemed villains in this game, compared to others of its kind. But that’s been a mixed bag. Emet Selch is one of the best examples of villains in general in the video game genre - the game itself showed exactly why he was the way he was, without excusing the atrocities that he committed along the way. (Fandom is a different story on the excusing - I am deeply uncomfortable with the “but he didn’t see humans as equals” argument being used in earnest - but that’s a different post.) And then they gave us an opportunity to see who he was before the sundering, before the trauma, and that once his full memory was restored and he had the opportunity to understand the full scope of what happened, he would gladly (though with characteristic grumbling) help us put the world to rights before his truly final curtain call.

Zenos did not have the same narrative opportunities. If that disappoints you, I understand. But it’s not a failure of the game, it’s just a narrative decision.

(Briefly - Gaius is a very, VERY different story, and one that I think is actually a failure of the game’s narrative. Gaius Baelsar should have remained dead, and the person we met in the Burn should have been an entirely different Garlean leader who defected and decided to help us. That one change would have saved that entire storyline.)

But, Zenos. We, as players, have the opportunity to read some ancillary materials to understand more about him. Side stories, lore books - we find he was neglected as a child, raised by narcissists and molded to be the person he was, to a certain extent. We can sympathize, we can understand the narrative threads that denied him a real chance at being a good person. But do not confuse what we the players know - or even the space the game writers give us to play with our headcanons - with the knowledge and opinions the characters should reasonably be expected to express in in-game dialogue.

What does the Warrior of Light know about Zenos in game, through actual in-game sources? He’s the great-grandson of Solus/Emet, his father was a xenophobic zealot, he gave zero shits about anything other than fighting and let a lot of really shitty people do his governing for him, he killed a ton of people and threatened many, many more, the Ascians brought him back to life and as soon as he got his body back, he allied with Fandaniel and let a civil war turn Garlemald into a smoking crater just so they could get to Zodiark, and when Fandaniel used Zodiark for his own purposes, he just shrugged and went wandering on his own because nothing in Garlemald was any use to him anymore. That’s pretty much it. Yes, he came to our aid at the moment we needed it most, but he did so for his own ends, and we gave him what he wanted. You can headcanon the reason why your WoL did so, but that doesn’t change the basic facts we know from in-game sources.

Your WoL doesn’t canonically know anything about his childhood. And, quite frankly, even if they did, do you think it would be reasonable to “well actually” Zero and the Garleans in dialogue at this point?

Zenos is a tragedy. Zenos also caused tragedy, and those two concepts can coexist in our minds as players. But in-game characters can’t be expected to view Zenos in a sympathetic light, not even our WoL. External lore sources are not in-game lore. Our headcanons are not in-game lore. The writers cannot avoid every single instance of our dialogue possibly deviating from our headcanons, not without eliminating dialogue entirely.

(There’s an ancillary topic here, about how the current shape of the world makes it very inadvisable for writers who give a shit about society to gloss over atrocities committed by a rich ogliarch in their narrative, no matter what players headcanon about that character, but that’s an aside to the points I’m making. But while I’m all in for villain-fucking and blorbo-appreciation in a fannish space, fandom is a totally different space than canon.)

In the end, Zenos died a villain. A complicated, interesting one who made a fascinating decision at the end of his life, but a villain nonetheless. We can do whatever we want with him in fandom - that’s what fanworks are for. And we can be disappointed that the canon narrative doesn’t share our points of view. But we should also understand that there are very good reasons for those POVs, and that not sharing our POV is not a failure of the narrative.

#jaime plays ffxiv #ffxiv #ffxiv spoilers #6.3 spoilers #that's a lot of words #but they were in my head #and needed to get out #i am a big proponent of divorcing your own feelings about a character #from what is good or expected from the narrative that's being told

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